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Thursday, November 17, 2016

Hitman (2016) - Episode 20 - The Plot Thickens

And now, we end our little escapade in Colorado.

The story of Hitman has always been a precarious position. As a series, Hitman has always been gameplay first. While a story exists, and there is a canon for the series, it has never been an important part of the series.

There has only been one Hitman game where the story came to the forefront and had a large impact, and that was Absolution. You might remember Absolution as one of the worst received Hitman games by fans and critics alike.

While this was partially due to the story being an absolute mess, a large part of it was that the focus on the story made the actual missions unfun. It was less of a Hitman game and more of a traditional, but mediocre stealth game with Hitman tropes thrown in every now and then. And ironically, the assassinations felt more contrived than ever in the context of the backwater, stereotypically grindhouse flick it tried to be.

There's a story to Hitman (2016) too, to be sure. However, it takes a different approach. Like Blood Money before it, the missions are book-ended by story-related scenes. And while they have solid acting, direction, and a decent plot to go along with it, they know exactly what they need to do an aspire to do no more than that.

Each mission is given a briefing that provides context to how the target has become a "bad dude" and why Agent 47 is hired to assassinate them. At the end, they are given a cut-scene that ties the assassination into the game's larger, overall plot. It's not particularly fancy, and the story isn't some highbrow melodrama, but for Hitman it doesn't need to be. All it needs to do is tie together all the happy murder fun times.